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Riley Black, writing for Slate: Stop Trying to Out-Science Transphobes. But regardless of their aims, transphobes of all stripes appeal to the authority of science—science that is pretty easy to refute. This is a trap. Allies fall for this time and again. The same conservatives who try to deny my rights based on “science†have… [more]
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This, by Esther Wang for Jezebel, is a superb piece of journalism. It’s about the war on trans girls currently being waged by the US religious right both in the US and over here and it does something rare: it tells you about the trans girls at the centre of the moral panic over trans… [more]
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Mother Jones: The Real Threat to Women’s Sports Isn’t Trans Athletes. It’s Sexually Predatory Coaches. As scandal after scandal emerges about the pervasive abuse of young athletes, it’s time we reevaluate our priorities. Trans athletes aren’t the problem. It’s not just sports. Here in the UK, the “protect women” crowd who talk repeatedly about the supposed… [more]
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Another day, another manufactured outrage that’s somehow all trans people’s fault. Hasbro, owner of the Mr Potato Head toy, is bringing out a new version that will have both male-appearing and female-appearing pieces in the same box so that you can make an entire family. Because the resulting potato heads can be male, female or… [more]
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In the early 20th Century, there was a moral panic: the number of people saying they were left-handed rose from 2% of the population to 11%. Left-handed people were routinely demonised, with entire books being published about the newly discovered sickness of left-handedness. The word sinister, which means malicious or devious, is derived from the… [more]
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In Umberto Eco’s essay about Ur-fascism, he describes 14 signs of fascism or a pre-fascist state. The list includes the cult of tradition, the rejection of modernism and contempt for the weak; it also includes fear of difference and the obsession with a sinister plot orchestrated by the people who are different. The UK’s government… [more]
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I’ve been in online journalism for nearly 23 years now, and during that time I’ve been called lots of things and had the odd death threat from Irvine Welsh fans. But until very recently I never had men tracking me down so they could send emails patronising me. The difference, of course, is gender. I… [more]
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OpenDemocracy: British government proposals for strengthening free speech at universities cite an American anti-LGBT ‘hate group’ and a British ‘dark money’-funded think tank that has recommended no-platforming Extinction Rebellion. The hate group is the Alliance Defending Freedom, which you may remember from its campaign against Scotland’s hate speech laws, or its witnesses in the case… [more]
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An excellent piece in The New Republic about the women trying to remove trans girls from sports. It’s no coincidence that so many Christian Right groups and other anti-LGBT+ groups use “mums” or “mothers” in their statements: we associate motherhood with kindness, not bigotry and cruelty. But of course mothers can be just as bigoted,… [more]
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Justin Myers, aka The Guyliner, has written a really good post about LGBT+ History Month. Like him, I feel that there are big gaps in my knowledge of LGBT+ and feminist history. So it’s nice to be reminded that: Nobody will judge you for not being exactly sure who threw the first chunks of masonry… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
